The Lake Washington School District is in the middle of dealing with a rather nasty outbreak, and it’s nothing like influenza or pink eye. It’s an outbreak of the Goblin virus, and it’s wreaking havoc on both the school’s network and its IT budget. With 50 schools in the District and around 25,000 total machines in service, they’ve had to call in additional techies to help contain the outbreak.

No one’s quite sure how Goblin found its way onto the network in the first place, but some are pointing fingers at the LWSD Mobile Access for Students program. Under the program, middle and high school students were given netbooks — some of which were signed out for use at home. IT staffers believe that some of those systems had unapproved games and apps loaded onto them, and that the Goblin virus may very well have piggybacked on one of those downloads.

The district’s Lenovo netbooks reportedly all run Sophos anti-malware software, which has had definitions that recognize Goblin for some time. It’s possible, however, that a new variant managed to avoid detection — and once Goblin has access to a network with accessible shares, it’s off to the races. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft’s Premier Support team is now involved. You’d expect the company to get its hands dirty when a problem like this pops up at a major school district right near the Redmond home base (and where numerous Softies send their children). Between Microsoft and Sophos, the outbreak should be neutralized fairly quickly.

If the investigation ultimately does trace the source back to a student’s netbook, the school’s IT administrators will no doubt be kicking themselves for not locking down the loaner systems properly. It’s easy to underestimate the importance of things like a well-executed group policy and software like DeepFreeze, but an acceptable use agreement only goes so far towards controlling what students (and staff, for that matter) do with their systems.

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SSDs are easily one of the hottest technology items of 2012, especially considering their declining prices and increasing capacities. Even though, they were one of the more disappointing items over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Where were all the the 200GB+ drives for under $100?

While we were disappointed in what deals the biggest shopping weekend of the year brought us on SSDs, at least we’re still seeing good discounts on some new models. Samsung’s 840 is the successor to the popular 830, using less expensive flash to bring you more drive-for-your-buck without compromising on performance.

Like its successful older sibling, the 840 is a 2.5-inch form factor and uses the latest SATA III 6.0Gbps interface. Samsung calls for up to 250 MB/s write and 540 MB/s read throughput, though the real performance boost an SSD provides is super-fast access to smaller amounts of data.

Our deal today takes the list $229.99 list price of the 840 250GB model down to just $189.99, all with instant savings and no mail-in rebate hassle. While the list price was already not terrible coming in under $1 per GB, this discount price puts it at $0.75 per GB, which is rather competitive for such a new model. You also get a download code for the new PC game Far Cry 3, which is a nice bonus for gamers looking to feed some more speed to their rig.

While this will be plug and play for nearly any recent laptop, desktop users will need to grab a simple mounting kit to put this 2.5-inch drive in their 3.5-inch HDD bay, which can usually be found for around $10.

Black Friday is not only the Thanksgiving Day for the Americas; UK citizens have also taken benefit from the sales announced by Amazon. This sale has resulted in earning record breaking numbers for the Kindle devices. This year’s Kindle devices sale is almost three times more than the previous year record. There are neither hard figures associated with the sales of units done at Amazon nor any comparison with the sales of FireTablets.On the event of Thanksgiving, Kindle Fire Tablet was discounted at 99 or $159 from the previous price of 129. Amazon on this discounted rate has encountered incredible reaction from the customers. Mr. Jorrit Van der Meulen, VP of Kindle EU has said that in the history of sales, Kindle Fire Tablet has enjoyed three times more sales on the Black Friday at Amazon.co.uk and the impressive records has been shared.

The sale of Kindle Fire Tablet continued till 26th November, until midnight and has remarkably boosts sales in the running history of Amazon for the UK citizens.

In September 2012, Amazon has started selling Kindle Fire Tablet in the international market. Before September 2012, the sales of tablet was only limited in US market. In Europe the competition is fully heated and Kindle has taken its leap against the sales of Apple’s iPad mini- the smaller range of tablet and Barnes & Noble tablets which uses signing of the retail deals with the departmental stores with established network of the bookstores.

For the selling of Kindle devices on the UK’s bookstore, Amazon is closely working with Waterstones bookstore and selling devices.

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After the record breaking Black Friday, retailers have also encountered Big Cyber Monday. IBM’s digital analytics benchmark has shown 25.6 percent “frog leap” in the first half of the operations. This leap in the sales has also been encountered during the same period of Cyber Monday 2011.The total numbers of consumers visiting the retail site to acquire mobile handsets is 20.4 percent, which is performing outstanding. However, the purchasers of mobile devices from the retail sites are about 10.1 percent.

The hottest and demanding mobile device in the retail shopping is iPhone. iPhone is driving almost 7.9 percent traffic in comparison of 6.7 and 5.6 percent for the iPad and the Android devices, respectively. On Cyber Monday, 0.2 percent of sales have also encountered because of the social networks, as referred by the shoppers.

PayPal also revealed the stats for the Cyber Monday and showed that the company has received 196 percent more payment volumes on mobile sales on Cyber Monday 2012 than the Cyber Monday 2011.

Last Cyber Monday, big spending has been made and retail sites have experienced sales of $1.25 billion. However, proper marketing campaigns and earlier promotions have rolled out consumers to the online sites on Thanksgiving and Black Friday as well. This has resulted in online sales of over $1 billion on the Black Friday (which is almost 26% more than the last year) and $633 million sales on the Thanksgiving (which is almost 32% more than the last year).

Increment in the spending have forced many to anticipate the lower growth on Cyber Monday, yet IBM’s analysts have forecast shop outs today as well. Let’s see how the final numbers will roll out.

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Products like Dish’s Hopper and Joey are letting customers watch programming on multiple TVs without the need for full DVRs in every room, and a new set-top box has hit the FCC that could represent Comcast’s latest move in that same direction. As noticed by Wireless Goodness, the Humax XI3-H is an IP set-top box that will likely serve as a client for products like the Pace X1 gateway box; that device will feature tuners and converters than turn television signals into IP streams that can be served to clients in the home. It was previously reported that Pace was also manufacturing a device named the XI3, though it’s unclear if this Humax model supplants that device, or if it’s just another manufacturer’s take on the same concept.

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Eavesdrop is a new third-party web app that utilizes Rdio’s API to let you listen in on a friend’s playlist. By simply signing into the app with your Rdio credentials, users can pick from any friend currently online and instantly tune in to their current selection. From there you’ll hear what they hear, though the person on the other end is never alerted that their listening habits are being monitored. That could draw some privacy concerns, though the invasiveness is rather limited since you presumably know your Rdio friends — or at least don’t mind them piggybacking on your session. Your songs will still be shared via Facebook if you’ve enabled that setting however, making it possible for a friend to uncover your eavesdropping ways.

It wasn’t until last week that I finally started watching the Lord of the Rings movies. I know, I am a bit behind and feel free to make fun of me for it in the comments as all of my Facebook friends are doing that already, but I just never had any desire to see them until recently. While I still have the last movie to go, so far I am really enjoying the movies although they are a bit long for my taste.

Well, for those that are more hardcore Lord of the Rings fans than I am and who also have some knitting skills, I have found the perfect Lord of the Rings scarf pattern for you!

Ravelry user Diana Stafford uploaded the pattern for this ‘One Ring’ scarf that you can download for free assuming you have the skills to make this or know somebody that would make it for you.

If you want to keep your neck warm and love the inscription on the ring from Lord of the Rings, than this might just be the scarf idea for you!

Share this with any Lord of the Rings fans you know! Like us on Facebook too!